I am Beautiful and O Boy have been directed by students of Kamla Nehru College and feature some QCI regulars! So come, watch, discuss, and encourage these young film-makers to produce more brilliant work!

This is the fourth screening, in a series of films we will show every 1st or 3rd Saturday of the month at Naz’s Milan Centre. The screening will be followed by a group discussion. Email invites will be sent prior to each screening.

Cutting across class, gender, language and caste, the film tells the stories of gay/bisexual/lesbian persons living in the city of Bangalore. Through them it brings forth the debate on the basic right to one’s sexual/gender expression, and it aims to mobilize debate and discussion and generate support from within and outside the sexual minority communities.

Directed by T. Jayashree.

I am Beautiful

In a world where ideals of body, identity and beauty are shot through with gender ideals, this film tries to find important explorations of these ideals in the “queer” community. The film takes from the ideas of members of this community to establish the rainbow of definitions and notions of ‘beauty’; similarities and contrast between all such definitions and yet their respective relevance. Through interviews, the film tries to attempt to break stereotypes, or perhaps in the course reinforce them, about the idea of beauty and acceptance. The film at the same time questions the need to label ‘beauty’ in itself as well as the community. As our protagonists discuss and question the hold that society and popular beliefs have had on their ability to experience and communicate their measuring of the term ‘beauty’, perhaps they will also find viewers hungry for such reflections.

In a traditionally patriarchal society where the virginity of women has been discussed and scrutinized to the hilt, our movie delves into a much overlooked sphere of the very same concept in their male counterparts. The entire concept of virginity has been discussed keeping in mind male virginity.

Our film revolves around the mind of one boy who is pondering on what virginity actually is. What it’s expected to mean to him, what his peers believe it to be, it’s relevance and so on. As we see the unnamed boy thinking, and his own understanding of the entire concept of virginity evolves, the movie too unfolds itself, lending the spectator a clear view into his mind.

(Complete synopsis for this documentary is available at QueerCampus India google group)

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The Cathartist is the Editor at GaysiFamily. She remembers nearly all her dreams to the last detail, would rather skip a movie than watch it after missing the first five minutes, has a rare form of Tourettes leading to inappropriate conversations and is a hopeless jerk magnet. If she ever writes a book, it will be called "La tyrannie d'anciens amoureux".

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